Sunday, November 24, 2013

I have been struggling with compositions for still life. So I decided to take some time and do some exercises. One thing I do need is to get some better grade reds. Even though these look bright and saturated, I realized how hard it was to get the paint to lay down on the canvas panel. I think it is a combination of panel and paint. Thinking of getting back to gessoboard or cutting my own masonite and applying gesso again.﻿

Sunday, November 17, 2013

I have been spending time on the Daily Paintworks site and watching my art bytes that you can order from this site. Carol Marine http://www.dailypaintworks.com/artists/cmarine is a favorite artist of mine and she did an art byte on painting apples. I replicated her composition with a few changes and painted it trying to remember all her good teaching points. I got so much from doing this. I have a tendency to forget or miss points, but when I go entirely through the process, it finally sinks in and goes to my muscle memory.

Here's some of things that I learned:

A penumbra is the light transition mark that is put on the edge of the cast shadow which is darker than the color in light and lighter than the shadow color (this shows up nicely at the bottom of the cast shadow of the green apple on the right).

When laying down the first color of the apples, don't make it too light. She said she tended to do that before. It may not be as light as it looks.

All shadows are grays which are the mixture of red, blue and yellow. Grays are used in the form and cast shadows.

She talks a lot about islands (apples, form and cast shadows) and oceans (backgrounds, papers that items sit on). Paint islands (apple) first, then cast shadows (more of the islands) and then papers and table (oceans) last. Go out of the lines when painting the islands. When you lay in the oceans you cover it up and the object fits in the picture rather than on top.

I highly recommend going to the Daily Paintworks shop and buying Art Bytes! They are free or cost $5 - $15.

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Not the greatest picture of this painting. It was really dreary outside so I took the picture inside using the night setting and turning off the flash. I'm going to need lots of practice on drawing bowls but I think this turned out ok. ﻿

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

This is the first acrylic I've done in such a long while. I painted it first in oil and couldn't get the background colors nice and I ended up with mud, thus scraping the whole thing. I then got my acrylics out. I had plenty of good colors to do this. I'll keep going with acrylics for my still life paintings for a while and see how it goes.﻿

Monday, November 4, 2013

I know I should be painting fall landscapes since I live in beautiful Ohio, but I'm missing the beach! These are familiar scenes with kids being buried in the sand. I can't imagine why they love it...﻿

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About Me

My name is Sue Williams and I am a self-taught oil and pastel artist. After my retirement as an elementary educator, I now have the time to devote to painting. I love using oil, soft pastel and copic markers, brush and palette knife. I am experimenting with subjects, paint mostly from photographs at this time, sketch figures, and strive to paint loosely. It's my goal to paint and sketch every day and continue my growth as an artist. Thanks for viewing my work.